Diphyllobothrium latum

About Diphyllobothrium latum

The cestode Dibothriocephalus latus, also known as Diphyllobothrium latum, or broad fish tapeworm, is a parasite of fish and mammals. The parasite causes diphyllobothriasis in humans through consumption of raw or undercooked fish. Symptoms of diphyllobothriasis are generally mild, and can include diarrhoea, abdominal pain, vomiting, weight loss, fatigue, constipation and discomfort.

The current taxonomically correct name of this species is Dibothriocephalus latus, as referenced by WoRMS, 2018: the genus Diphyllobothrium has recently been found not to be monophyletic. WormBase naming will reflect the naming in the NCBI Taxonomy database, to enable cross-referencing with other public databases.

Genome Assembly & Annotation

Assembly

The draft genome assembly was produced by the Parasite Genomic group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, in collaboration with TomÃ¡Å¡ Scholz (Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic) as part of the 50 Helminth Genomes project. The assembly uses Illumina paired-end sequencing followed by an in-house genome assembly pipeline comprising various steps, including contig assembly, scaffolding, gap-filling and error-correction.

Annotation

The gene predictions were made by the Parasite Genomics group at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and WormBase, as part of the 50 Helminth Genomes project. An in-house pipeline was developed that used MAKER to generate high-quality annotations by integrating evidence from multiple sources: ab initio gene predictions from AUGUSTUS, GeneMark-ES, and SNAP; projected annotation from C. elegans (using GenBlastG) and the taxonomically nearest reference helminth genome (using RATT); and ESTs, mRNAs and proteins from related organisms aligned to the genome using BLAST, with refinement of alignments using Exonerate.